Thursday, June 8, 2017

Here’s a surprise turn of events: Softbank — maker of the friendly Pepper robot and a major M&A player in the tech world — has just announced
that it is acquiring two more robotics companies from Google owner
Alphabet as part of its own deeper move into the field: it is buying Big
Dog developer Boston Dynamics and the secretive bipedal robotics firm Schaft.

A spokesperson for Softbank has confirmed to us that the terms of the
deal are not being disclosed, but we will try to find out. In case you
are wondering (we were), we have double checked and these are the only
two of Alphabet’s robotics companies getting acquired by Softbank.

But robots are huge across all of Japan, with some of the biggest
innovations, investments, and motivations for developing them coming out
of the country; and so, in the end, it looks like another titan of
Japanese industry beat Toyota to the punch.

“Today, there are many issues we still cannot solve by ourselves with
human capabilities,” said Masayoshi Son, Chairman & CEO of SoftBank
Group Corp., in a statement. “Smart robotics are going to be a key
driver of the next stage of the Information Revolution, and Marc and his
team at Boston Dynamics are the clear technology leaders in advanced
dynamic robots. I am thrilled to welcome them to the SoftBank family and
look forward to supporting them as they continue to advance the field
of robotics and explore applications that can help make life easier,
safer and more fulfilling.”

While Softbank has been hard at work doubling down on big bets in
areas that it believes will be at the center of the future of computing —
other acquisitions have included its $24 billion acquisition
of chip maker ARM Holdings — for Alphabet, this is part of the
company’s bigger efforts to rationalise some of its many acquisitions
and strategic bets over the years that have not panned out as great fits
with the wider business....MORE

I like Atlas.Spot and Big Dog, the four-legged ones, are scarily efficient. Atlas seems a bit of a bi-pedal klutz: